“Do it with passion, or not at all.”
~ Rosa Nouchette Carey
A beautiful path led me to this work. Although I didn’t pick up a torch until I turned 40, I’ve been driven to create since before I could read. I spent my childhood falling in love with the experience of adding beauty to the world using just my imagination and my hands. I painted and sketched for hours in the mornings before anyone else was awake. This continued on through my adolescence, while I also immersed myself in a natural love for science and eventually decided to pursue a career in medicine.
I took a deep dive into the next two decades of my life, studying in coffee shops and anatomy labs, traveling abroad and finding myself. I put art aside, graduated medical school and married my high school sweetheart. Just before starting my pediatric residency, we had our first child. I worked through residency as a new mom and had our next two children not long after. The 80-hour work weeks built my resilience, but it took time to find balance and a rhythm and the space that would allow me to welcome art back into my life.
In 2019 I enrolled in my first course at a local metal arts school and fell in love with metallurgy. When the pandemic started shortly thereafter, time seemed to stop. I continued caring for patients but would ditch my scrubs at the end of each day and race to my workspace where my saw was waiting. I began teaching myself the skills involved in jewelry hand fabrication, determined to learn how to create art from metal, and it became my meditation. I gradually built my home studio and acquired the tools and the skills to produce the kind of jewelry that felt true to my vision. I eventually swapped out my desk for a professional jeweler’s bench and people began to connect with my work.
I like to think that the pieces I create are empowering, edgy, strong and sexy. I consider the human body as sacred and I strive to create pieces that become one with the wearer. I rarely sketch my ideas and prefer feeling and intuition to lead the way in my designs when I am working with metal.
Enthusiasm, mindfulness and positivity remain pillars in my approach. I accept the triumphs, the failures and everything in between during my process. I am grateful for the patience I am cultivating, and the privilege of being able to create from my heart and extend that energy.
Giving back to the community and collaborating with others is important to me. I believe we must do what we can to support and lift each other up. It’s an honor to create pieces that offer joy in both direct and indirect ways. I hope you see something in my work, or in the way that I work, which inspires you the way that so many others have inspired me.
When I’m not covered in silver dust, I can be found hiking in the forest, enjoying life with my family, and continuing to care for children and young adults as an active pediatrician in Boston, MA.
Shira Hanna Designs offers a thoughtful collection of unique precious metal and gemstone jewelry.
Each piece is one-of-a-kind and fabricated by hand, one at a time.